All of Google's products have adopted the "OK Google" hotword in recent years, but Google Home presents an interesting challenge. What if you have another device around with OK Google enabled? It can be a mess, so now there's also "Hey Google."

If you go to Google's support pages, it actually says you're supposed to be saying Hey Google. Don't tell that to the Home app, which tells you to use OK Google commands in big bold letters. Underneath that, it notes that Hey Google would also be acceptable. It also explicitly tells you to use OK Google during the setup. The device you activate can make a big difference as Google Home uses Assistant, and most phones are still on the standard OK Google commands.

If you don't have a phone with OK Google detection enabled, you can go ahead and use OK Google for Google Home. If you do have OK Google on your phone, use Hey Google when you want to access Assistant on Google Home. Those are the only two commands that work. It's a little inelegant, but that's the deal.

Google is paying 97$ per hour! Work for few hours and have longer with friends & family! !mj258d:
On tuesday I got a great new Land Rover Range Rover from having earned $8752 this last four weeks.. Its the most-financialy rewarding I've had.. It sounds unbelievable but you wont forgive yourself if you don’t check it
!mj258d:
➽➽
➽➽;➽➽ http://GoogleFinancialJobsCash258MediaProjectGetPay$97Hour... ★★✫★★✫★★✫★★✫★★✫★★✫★★✫★★✫★★✫★★✫★★✫★★✫★★✫★★✫★★✫★★✫★★✫★★::::::!mj258d:....,.....

AOSPrevails

In the future maybe, even Echo only have 3 right now(Alexa,Amazon,Echo)

Motorola has(/had?) the ability to customize the trigger word. I was going to use Hello Moto, but the phone said it was too short so I had to go with "Hello Moto X" instead... Though that would have been a Moto app that simply passed my voice query onto Google via some dark magic.

Juan Estrada

You cay use OK GU and works too.. Sounds better also

mattcoz

I used to be able to use "Hey Google" all the time, but their speech detection seems to have gotten better at telling the difference. Hopefully this trickles down to phones.

Hopefully it DOESN'T because we need a different command for each. That's the point. Otherwise every time we activate Home we'll activate our phones too.

PerhapsNever

Actually, that has been fixed. When you trigger it and your phone(s) and Home(s) are near each other, only the Home closest to you responds. The phone(s) show "Answering on another device".

David Hyman

The ars review (and during their debut) mentioned that all the devices that support "Ok google" work together and only the closet one will actually answer the question. The most lame thing seems to be that getting on the assistant bandwagon with Home actually removes some features (like sending an SMS or taking a picture) because Home will override those commands from your phone

Trust me, this is completely different. Wear... literally does nothing right in terms of connection with your phone. This is done through your Google account and not some companion app. Even if you have multiple Google Home devices and multiple Android phones, all in range and all with hotword detection, as long as they are all have the same Google account on them, literally every device that heard you will activate, but only the Google Home that decides it's closest to you will respond while any phones will display a message that another device is responding. And so far the success rate of this is 100%, so I'm feeling pretty good about it.

mattcoz

Needs to be more than that, because your phone will be closest to you most of the time.

Lars Jeppesen

Oh no, not SMS again....

mattcoz

This is why we need options.

Roberto Virga

They've just doubled the chances of me activating it accidentally, which were already very high to begin with.

it's interesting to see how it works so differently for many people, it never happened to me. custom keyword would help for everything tho I guess

Adam Margeson

I've had a spare phone (GNex) that I use for Tasker stuff in my house sitting on a table in another room pick up references to Google. I'll be talking, then suddenly hear the "dink" of the voice activation and it'll take me a sec to realize what happened. A few seconds later, it says the "If you said something, I didn't hear it!" response.

This seems to be an A/B test of some sort, because, while it works for me every single time, I've been asking around in forums and anecdotally around half of Pixel owners have been saying it doesn't work while others say it does.

They used "Hey Google" in addition to "Ok, Google" in their advertising so it would be pretty weird if they didn't allow "Hey Google". Hopefully this comes to phones as well. Feels more natural with hey.

Adam Margeson

That's the one feature I wish Google would "borrow" from Motorola (hey, Google owned them once upon a time) - I want to customize the activation word of my phone!

mattcoz

But you have to understand from their perspective why they don't want you doing that.

Lars Jeppesen

"Alexa", lol

C64

I'll be interested in it when i can set my own activation words. Something like

It actually applies to phones as well, but only if you have a Google Home nearby that heard you. Regardless, you still shouldn't have to use "Hey Google" if you don't really want to just to make sure your phone doesn't hear you, because the phone will defer to your Home anyway.

Wait, didn't they state that they'd be solving this multiple-devices-activating problem by making all your Assistant-capable devices aware and interconnected enough such that only the one that can hear you best activates? Or was that only for multiple Google Home devices?

They did. If you have a phone and a Google Home, or any multiple of both, in range of hearing the hotword, only the closest Google Home to you will answer, while any phones that heard you will display a message that a Google Home is answering you. This article simply fails to mention that this is only an issue with phones that have hotword detection enabled that are not connected to the same Google account.

Google Home takes priority over your phone. You can never activate your phone with "Ok Google" if Google Home is in range. (Your phone will light up, but only Google Home will answer you)

But anyway this highlights a big problem with Google Home. Google does a terrible job of letting you know exactly what it does.

I know they have a "list of examples" on the app and online. That list is terribly incomplete. We need a wiki or something that provides comprehensive documentation.

Đức Thành

"But anyway this highlights a big problem with Google Home. Google does a terrible job of letting you know exactly what it does."

Not just Google Home. There's a similar problem with everything inside Google, even YouTube. Everyone is just outstandingly brilliant at their jobs, but nobody has any idea what the others are doing. And of course that leads not to not clearly communicating with people outside of Google. Google is just bad at communication, period.

While this is funny because it ultimately shows that inside Google is just a bunch of (admittedly really really smart) nerds, I believe this is a solvable problem. Google just needs to be aware of its communication issues and start doing something about them.

Armando Saldierna

I've had problems with the phone still answering questions with Google home in the same room.

spann37

1st world problems. I have a Google Home, and when I use the "OK Google" hot word, my phone activates, but defers to the Google Home Speaker. It's really not that big a deal.

AOSPrevails

One Word Hot word soon plz Google. When I want to ask something simple and fast these days(like 171lbs to kg) I go to my Echo Dot instead of my Pixel XL b/c on less word.

Juan Estrada

I dont know if somebody already mention this but i have been using OK GU.. instead of ok google and works too. Or you can also say OK BOO and works too. Just saying so you know it too..

blindexecutioner

I just tried it on my pixel and it worked. Mind blown. It flows off the tongue so much better than ok google.

keithzg

Hey Google, why won't you let me order a Google Home here in Canada?

MJ

So far, I've noticed that the Google Home picks up "OK Google" much better than "Hey Google" when music is playing above 4 or so. It must be because those syllables are more percussive and likely to cut through the music that's playing.

Kimmy Gibbler

Works with the Pixel as well =D

Đức Thành

I had this question on the back of my mind for some time now, and I just figured it out.

The reason for all the discrepancies and inconsistencies inside Google is because everyone just kind of expects other people, even from other teams that handle wildly different projects or varied aspects of a complex project, to be on the same level of understanding/awareness of what they're doing and what they know. This is a common problem among a bunch of really smart people, where someone's knowledge is so obvious to themselves that they kinda just assume that it's obvious to other people, too (thinking it's common knowledge); even when it's not a very reasonable assumption.

Similar and related problems include Curse of knowledge (when people cannot disregard their processed knowledge to consider other people's perspectives) and Dunning-Kruger effect (but for the people at the higher end of the competency spectrum, as they expect others to be similarly competent), respectively.
I'm not sure what to call this problem yet, but it sure is something of a growing case of miscommunication or even a lack of communication.

My assumption that Google consists of a bunch of really brilliant people who don't talk to one another was formed as a joke, but it's turning out to be more and more likely as a valid hypothesis now. If any Googler happens to be reading this (highly unlikely), please tell your superiors to add one more item to the list of 'Things Google needs to solve' now: Communication. This applies to both external and internal communications.

Hi people, when you tell 10 times (for instance) "ok google", does it respond every time ? Some french people (I'm french) say it doesn't understand it well, but I think that's because they just have a shity accent :D (I do). What do you think ?

Kelly Ellis

I have an Android phone and Google Home. This advice won't work - it's true that you can say "Hey Google" when you want to talk to Google Home. That's great. But even "OK Google" will still be answered by Home, rather than the Android device, when I'm within earshot of both. The Android device simply says "answering on another device."

This doesn't solve the problem when I want to do something Home can't do but my phone can, such as send a text. If I say "ok google, send a text" in range of both devices, my Android says "answering on another device" and Home says "I'm sorry, I don't know how to do that yet."

They really need the ability to set custom trigger prompts for each device. Until then, I'll be struggling with minor usability issues between the activation on both devices.

Dave Watts

Absolutely- this is the biggest problem. And when you have shortcuts set up (i say OK Google "add food" to add an entry to MyFitnessPal)

Kathryn Lambkin

What's the point of Google home? Why wouldn't I just use my phone? I mean, apart from being another thing for them to sell me.